DISPLAYING ITEMS BY TAG: MATHS

Technology provides dynamic opportunities for teaching and learning of maths. It can enhance the learning process and make concepts come alive through engaging and interactive media. Edtech tools can also offer additional support to address the needs of all learners and create personalised learning experiences. Here are some edtech tools focused on raising numeracy standards in primary and secondary schools.

1. Maths-Whizz

First up is Maths-Whizz, a fun, online maths tutor for 5-13 year olds. The interactive lessons can be personalised to match each student’s unique strengths and areas of improvement. Not only does Maths-Whizz offer exciting, valuable maths tuition, it also provides free resources and features that help you plan the perfect maths lesson. Its because of this in-depth functionality that 100% of teachers agree that Maths-Whizz builds student knowledge. Their passion to build the best maths resource for schools earned them the 2019 Bett Award for Best Collaboration with a School.

2. Mathspace

Mathspace is the world’s first adaptive learning workbook for 6-18 year olds. Their lessons differ from other online maths tutors as they are built around the most important aspect of maths learning; the students reasoning process behind the final answer. Mathspace is an adaptive program, which means that students get graded and given feedback on every step throughout the process of problem solving. This gives students a deeper, more robust understanding of maths. It comes as no surprise that £2 per student.

3. Sparx Maths Homework

Sparx Maths Homework has an inspiring mission; to improve numeracy for over 5 million learners by 2030. It’s this ambition that lead them to develop an online platform that automatically sets one hour of personalised maths homework for every student, every week. Their platform boasts over 7’100 video tutorials and 30’500 questions, with each software is currently helping over 4’500 learners, 100% of which agree that daily use improves both student attainment and parental engagement.

4. Mathigon

Mathigon is a free, award winning online mathematics course for secondary school students. Unlike videos or conventional textbooks, students using Mathigon are encouraged to participate in engaging activities covering the whole of the curriculum. As well as an interactive textbook, Mathigon also features a virtual personal tutor that and answers direct questions and provides students with feedback. Each chapter of the Mathigon online textbook is brought to life with an interesting narrative that captivates students attention and imagination. It’s because of these features that 100% of users agree that Mathigon helps build students knowledge.

5. Times tables with Emile

Times tables with Emile is an impressive online resource for teaching Key Stage 2 children multiplication in a fun and engaging way. For times tables 1-12, the site offers appropriate games, activities and competitions tailored to each students ability. Students are encouraged to compete in groups or as a class to get to the top of the leaderboard and unlock new achievements. Via secure logins, teachers can pick out students that need help and students that are ready to move onto more challenging learning content. Times tables with Emile send out progress reports automatically to teachers, helping to drastically reduce teacher workload.

6. DoodleMaths

DoodleMaths is a multi-award winning online maths platform that is proven to accelerate children’s progress in Numeracy. What sets DoodleMaths apart from their competition is their powerful algorithm that identifies children’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). This is the narrow band between what a learner can do without help and what he or she needs help to do. DoodleMaths harnesses this information to create a unique work program for every student that ensures continual progression and better overall student attainment.

7. Mathletics

Mathletics is one of the most popular online maths resources. Used by over 5’000 schools in the UK and Ireland, it offers online courses designed for Foundation Stage learning up to Key Stage 5. What makes Mathletics so sought after is their vast array of curriculum-aligned learning resources; activities, eBooks and videos proven to significantly increase levels of student engagement, confidence and progress in Maths. Mathletics’ success has been proven in a study conducted by Oxford University that concluded students who made regular use of their resources did significantly better on a range of measures. You can read more captivating case studies on the impact Mathletics is having on students learning here.

8. Mangahigh

Popular mathematics and coding platform, Mangahigh, is used by 100’000 teachers in over 5’000 schools globally. Mangahigh uses gamification to encourage student engagement and make learning fun. Covering a wide range of topics including algebra, geometry, probability, statistics, measurement and coding, finding an activity that fits into your lesson content has never been easier. A basic version of the platform is currently available for free.

9. MyMaths

Finally, MyMaths is a subscription based website used by approximately four million students each year. Serving age ranges from Primary School up to A- Level, MyMaths is an all-in-one solution offering content applicable to all abilities. AQA and Edexcel GCSE maths courses are powered by MyMaths with direct links to MyMaths resources. This makes MyMaths the best option when considering maths revision tools.

Parental engagement in any subject is key to academic success - some studies show a probability increase of more than 50% for children who are supported by parents in their learning to achieve top grades versus children who receive little or no support.

From our experience working with over 45,000 children, families and schools across the UK to provide one-to-one maths tuition, parental support for their child’s maths learning journey in primary school has a significant impact.

“Parents play a crucial role in supporting their children’s learning, and levels of parental engagement are consistently associated with better academic outcomes. Evidence from our Teaching and Learning Toolkit suggests that effective parental engagement can lead to learning gains of +3 months over the course of a year.”

So why is it so hard sometimes to get parents involved in their children’s Maths education?

As teachers, we often worry that parents might be put off supporting in Maths at home as they might simply think of themselves as “not being a Maths person”, but when we asked 1000 parents for their views on maths at home, only 16% of respondents agreed with that statement.

Similarly, less than 20% confirmed that “My child refuses to let them teach”.

In fact, the most common concerns were about parents own knowledge and skills.

Over 62% of parents agreed with the statement: “I worry that I will confuse my child by teaching them a different method to the one they learn in school.”

And 54% agreed with the following: “I don't understand all the new terms schools use”.

The EEF Guidance Report On Working With Parents to Support Children’s Learning gives four key recommendations which are a great place to start.

1. Critically review how you work with parents

2. Provide practical strategies to support learning at home

3. Tailor school communications to encourage positive dialogue about learning

4. Offer more sustained and intensive support where needed

Specifically when it comes to supporting parents and carers with maths at home, here are the 7 steps we recommend all schools start with.

1. Don’t keep your calculation policy secret!

Every school should have a calculation policy and all teachers should know where to find it and how to teach to it; however, ask a parent about the calculation policy and you’ll be amazed to discover they probably don’t know it exists and they certainly wouldn’t have thought to ask for it. ‘It’s on the website’ isn’t good enough. Get it out there, share it every year with parents. Point out what changes as they move through the school.

2. Emphasise the importance of conceptual understanding

Many parents will still just be thinking about helping their child to get the answer right. Given schools now are much more likely to be following some kind of mastery approach we recommend you try to educate parents that understanding the reasons behind the result are as important as the result.

3. Show parents how to use concrete materials or pictorial representations

Encourage parents to get out the pasta pieces, use leaves for place value, draw their pizza shapes, and manipulate dots and circles on a page. Take a look at Matr’s Youtube channel which is full of ideas of physical maths activities for parents to do at home.

4. Give them strategies not just instructions

If you want parents to practise times tables with their children, then give them some suggested ideas and games or even apps to help them do this. Teach them which number facts they should know at every stage, and also how to use the partition method to avoid the dreaded counting in ones! Send home a list of recommended maths homework apps or websites. Just don’t expect them to know how to help without your support!

5. Support parents to focus on positive feedback

Confidence is key in Maths, and mistakes should be seen as something to learn from. We still believe that encouraging a growth mindset in our one-to-one lessons can help pupils take risks and achieve further than they imagined. We like to share phrases for parents to use at home like ‘‘thank you for your effort on X” and we also reward our 1-to-1 children with effort points that they collect avidly!

As teachers, we naturally use questions from an assessment for learning approach in our lessons. Show some of these to your parents too and they can start to probe and supporting their child’s deeper thinking and awareness of their own learning stages.

What do you notice?

What do you know?

Which skills have you used or improved?

Have you learnt something new?

What do you need to remember?

What did you do well today?

What was difficult about the task?

How is your work different?

What would you do differently next time?

What else could you find out about this?

Could you discuss what you have learnt with a partner (a sibling, friend or cousin)? / How would you teach someone else how to do this?

As the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) states: “Focus on building parents’ efficacy: that they are equal partners and can make a difference.” Upskill your parents and carers with training sessions or workshops (at a time that suits them!); focus on key skills and concepts, start with place value and the four operations - division, multiplication, addition and subtraction. Lots of schools now even get pupils involved in this!

Those are our 7 first simple steps for school leaders and maths coordinators to take on board the EEF recommendations and set the ball rolling for excellent Maths support from parents. For more detailed curriculum guidance aimed at a parent readership, the series of blog posts on how to support your child in Maths on the Matr website is a good place to start.

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Children often have it in their heads that learning Maths is dull. To challenge this notion, I created cZeus Maths Challenger: an innovative new app designed for all ages to make Maths fun.

cZeus supports teaching within schools and beyond, encouraging students to engage and build a social connection through Mathematics. The result is an app that not only facilitates the practice of Maths skills like addition, times tables and factorisation, but which also helps to improve students’ personal development and soft skills such as problem-solving.

This app bridges the gap between classroom learning and everyday Maths by increasing students’ confidence to apply skills outside of lessons. Students can challenge their parents, family members and friends outside school to a cZeus tournament, eliminating children’s lack of engagement with Maths by exercising logic in an entertaining and competitive environment.

Ray Turner, Professor of Theoretical Computer Science at Essex University, said: “cZeus puzzles offer a great alternative way for practising basic numeracy skills, as well as learning more complicated mathematical concepts such as algebra and basic number theory.”

Jon Greenman, Professor of Mathematics at Stirling University, said: “cZeus is a thoroughly absorbing game based on a smart idea and has the potential to take the player further along the path to a deeper appreciation and enjoyment of Mathematics.”

cZeus Maths Challenger has six difficulty classes to cater to students of all abilities. Players can unlock new levels as well as the chance to challenge each other in competitions. These features enable students to continuously improve their performance in agility and accuracy with numbers.

Ultimately, if students engage with Maths in a fun environment, they are more likely to be engaged and active learners - good news for teachers!

There’s no denying that while teaching is one of the most rewarding professions, many teachers are working long hours to meet the demands of the job. At Whizz Education, we’re keen to empower teachers by providing high-quality interactive teaching resources that aim to cut down on planning time both in and out of the classroom.

Each minute your students spend learning with the Maths-Whizz Tutor is actually a no-stress formative assessment that is used to tailor their learning experience. Maths-Whizz looks beyond just ‘right and wrong answers’: when assessing your students’ performances across its exercises and games, it factors in the time taken on each exercise and the number of hints and tips that are needed before the student answers. This information is gathered in Assessment & Reporting in real time, which converts the data into easy to understand reports that allow you to monitor the progress of individual students, classes, or even an entire school, at a glance!

Our Topic Focus feature allows you to direct the Maths-Whizz Tutor to focus your students’ lessons on any curriculum topic of your choosing. Better yet, these lessons are individualised. Students who are ready for the topic will receive lessons that meet their specific needs while students who aren’t ready yet will continue to build the right foundations. It takes just three clicks - simply pick a topic, set a deadline and click ‘confirm’. It’s that easy!

Not only does Assessment & Reporting cut down on your marking time by putting all students’ results in one convenient location, the fact that our easy to understand reports are easily shareable makes them invaluable for parent-teacher meetings, school performance reviews and meetings with school governors.

2. Teachers’ Resource

With Maths-Whizz, your days of scouring the internet to find the right maths resources for your students are over! With over 3,500 hours of teaching content in one convenient online location, Teachers’ Resource is the perfect tool to help you build your ideal maths lesson.

Our high-quality maths resources cover every National Curriculum learning objective from Reception to Year 6, and 96% of learning objectives up to the end of Year 8, allowing you to quickly and easily create differentiated lessons that cater for all of your students, irrespective of their maths ability. These lessons can be printed off as worksheets and given out to your class or displayed on an interactive whiteboard. All you need to do is log in, select your students’ ability and pick your topics.

That’s not all. With Teachers Resource, you can easily create assessment tasks covering multiple topics in just a few clicks.

3. Customer Success

At Whizz Education, we see ourselves as an education partner rather than an edtech provider, which is why we work closely with you to understand and achieve your specific educational goals.

When you subscribe to Maths-Whizz, you get your own personal Customer Success Manager, who will not only assist with the implementation of the programme at your school but will be available throughout your subscription to ensure you achieve all your unique educational goals. They will be responsible for providing your teachers with bespoke CPD-certified training courses and actionable impact reports while also holding special celebration assemblies that recognise student success.

So, if you’re looking to scale back your planning time this school year, while also ensuring that your students experience accelerated growth in mathematics, visit our website to request a free consultation.

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Wouldn’t it be amazing if there was a way to accelerate student progress in Maths, while also ensuring that they have fun along the way? Well, with Maths-Whizz, the multi-award winning online Maths tutor from Whizz Education, both of these seemingly contradictory objectives are entirely possible.

Not only has the Maths-Whizz Tutor been proven to accelerate student attainment in Maths*, but the verdict from students is that it also makes the subject fun. But how does Maths-Whizz achieve this? The process can be broken down into four easy steps.

1. Assessment

As soon as your students log into Maths-Whizz, they will take a pressure-free assessment which pinpoints their individual strengths and weaknesses across the curriculum. The tutor will then automatically set each student engaging tailor-made lessons and fun games, which aim to close the specific gaps in their core knowledge that have been identified in the assessment.

2. Adaption

As your students learn, the Tutor adapts its lessons and games, ensuring that they receive appropriate content at the exact moment it's needed. Factors used to determine the appropriateness of the content provided include: the student's answers to previous questions, the time taken to answer questions, and the level of encouragement provided by the Tutor before an answer is submitted.

3. Support

Just like a human tutor, the Maths-Whizz Tutor supports your students’ learning by providing confidence-boosting prompts and scaffolded support. Additionally, if the Tutor feels a student is struggling, it will take them back to foundational material.

4. Reinforcement

To ensure a student has mastered a topic, they must pass a short interactive test. Once they have passed this test, Maths-Whizz will move them on to more challenging content. If a student does not pass the test, the Tutor will continue to build on their foundations until they are ready to progress.

What’s more, we’re so confident that the Maths-Whizz Tutor will accelerate your students’ learning that we back it up with a Money Back Guarantee. T&Cs apply.

To find out more about how the Maths-Whizz Tutor can help accelerate student attainment at your school, visit www.whizz.com and book a free consultation, or call us on +44 (0)203 328 6564.

*Research by Whizz Education - conducted with over 12,000 students and verified by independent experts - found that students who used Maths-Whizz for 45-60 minutes a week increase their Maths Age, on average, by 18 months in the first year of use.

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Excess workload: it’s the recurring issue that’s driving teachers away from the profession in droves. Between planning and marking lessons, collating results and ensuring that every child is catered for, it’s surprising that educators have any time to think let alone teach a class.

In fact, a DfE survey has revealed that teachers currently work over 50 hours per week on average - that’s more than both police officers and nurses! Don’t worry though, because Whizz Education is here to help. At Whizz, we understand the issues you face, which is why all four components of our multi-award-winning Maths-Whizz Schools Suite are specifically designed to help ease your workload.

The Maths-Whizz Tutor is an adaptive, online teaching solution which cuts down lesson planning time by assessing each student, and then providing them with fully-individualised lessons that aim to close specific gaps in their core Maths knowledge. In other words, the Tutor can simultaneously provide 30 different lessons to 30 different students, at the exact time they require it. Once a student masters a topic, the Tutor will progress to more challenging material, and if they struggle, it will provide confidence-boosting prompts until they are ready to move on. Additionally, the Tutor also marks lessons and collates the results, all in real time and all without teacher input!

As each Maths-Whizz lesson is marked, the results are converted into easy-to-understand reports, which instantly show your students’ strengths and weaknesses in each topic across the curriculum. Not only are these reports effective for identifying students’ needs, but they are also easily shareable, making them extremely useful for school performance reviews and parent-teacher meetings.

It’s no secret that planning your front-of-class Maths lessons can be an extremely time-consuming process, but this certainly isn’t the case when you have Maths-Whizz! With over 1,200 engaging exercises and worksheets, and a series of ready-made assessments available in one convenient online location, our Teachers’ Resource saves you the time usually spent scouring the internet for lesson content. To plan your perfect Maths lesson, all you need to do is select your students’ ability level and choose your topic.

If not done properly, the implementation of edtech can be an additional burden on teacher workload. However, when you subscribe to Maths-Whizz, you’re allocated a customer success manager who will come to your school to assist with the implementation of Maths-Whizz. Not only that, they will be on-hand throughout your subscription to ensure that you are achieving your unique educational goals through the provision of rigorous impact reports, bespoke CPD-certified training courses and special celebration assemblies that recognise student success. Our entire team has teaching experience, so they understand the practical issues you face each day.

So, what are you waiting for? If you’re ready to take back your life this year, call us on +44 (0)203 328 6564 to book a free consultation or arrange a free trial.

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A couple of years ago I led a study which provided the evidence, for the first time, that the physical characteristics of the classroom not only affect the learning progress of Primary school pupils, but impact very significantly. Taking everything together, the measured impact of the classroom design factors explained 16% of the variation in learning of the 3766 pupils - in the 153 classrooms - assessed.

Nesta, in partnership with Tata group and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), are calling on both students and teachers to transform the way they think about Maths. Inspired by The Crystal Maze and growth of ‘escape rooms’, the the innovation foundation have launched the Cracking the Code challenge for 11 to 14 year olds across the country to create their own escape room.

On the outside, Compton appears like any other Primary School in the UK. However, it has long had a reputation locally of doing things just a little bit ‘differently’. Shortly after arriving at the school in 2014, I was offered the chance to visit Brussels and work with the innovators at the Future Classrooms Lab as part of a research project into how technology can be used to redefine teaching in the 21st Century. Details about this project and the final report can be found here. This project introduced me to the world of Google, and it was at this point my view of technology in the classroom was turned on its head.